The Remnant River Red Gum of Edinburgh Gardens

Queen Victoria granted this ground to the people of Fitzroy in 1862. The river red gum may have been standing here already. The City of Yarra's register classes it as remnant, the category it uses for indigenous vegetation that was left rather than planted, and tags the same entry outstanding size, particularly old and significant habitat value. What the register does not give is a year. Its age band is the coarse one, over a hundred years at the survey in August 2012, and no independent source names this individual tree, so how much of this site's history it actually saw is an open question. If you know of a heritage citation or an old photograph that dates it, we would like to see it. The measurements are firmer: 28 metres tall, and 138 centimetres of diameter at breast height, which works out at roughly 4.33 metres of girth, since Yarra publishes the width across a trunk rather than the way round it. Eucalyptus camaldulensis is the most widely spread eucalypt in Australia, the tree of inland rivers and creek beds, and it has a habit of shedding heavy limbs in still weather, which is part of what makes an old one in a public park unusual. Most of what grows in these 24 hectares was brought in and planted. This one may not have been.